Rene Redzepi has billed it as one of his proudest moments he can think of. And it is called VILD MAD (in Danish) or Wild Food.

It is a resource for learning about, tasting and exploring wild food and is being launched in Denmark, the home of Redzepi, one of the world’s best chefs.

VILD MAD is split into three parts. The first is a curriculum for school kids in Denmark. The project wants to encourage children of all ages to explore their local landscape and taste the abundance of flavours around them. “We aspire to see knowledge of natural food being taught in schools as commonly as reading, writing and mathematics. We believe that providing young children with a basic understanding of edibility and of the landscape will broaden their perception of flavour, connect them to their surroundings in a more profound way and enable them to understand nature’s resources and flow.”

The second part of VILD MAD is a foraging and wild food school for all Danes. The aim behind the project is to provide Danes with the knowledge to be in tune with the flavours of the seasons, track down the different stages of wild berries in autumn. VILD MAD want to enable Danes to discover the fertile crops of the woods, such as mushrooms, wild seeds and flowers, and unearth roots that taste like cinnamon. “Become acquainted with the land so that you can stroll through a forest and understand what is edible, to harvest sustainably and learn to cook with these remarkable flavours.

The third component of VILD MAD will be a digital platform that serves as a database for information and imagery of varieties of plants and wild foods. It also provides guidelines on food safety, sustainability, an edibility map and tips on cooking your food.

MAD’s ambition is that VILD MAD will serve as a model for Denmark. “We hope that our project can be an inspiration for others to do the same thing elsewhere. A fundamental aspect of the project is to be as open as possible with sharing the technology and information to enable this to happen.

We wish Redzepi and VILD MAD all the success this initiative deserves.